Love is My Religion

 Creation

Move toward me and taste

The texture of my eyes inside you

Lap up my heaviness so that

I might feel light and small

Find me with your spirit 

Before your body does

Use my oil to quench yourself

But leave yourself with me

Lie down with me inside

The quake and play

My body like a violin to sing

Out the freedom of my heart

With my hair in your mouth

On my breasts with your hands

Reach deeply into places

Untouched by humanity

Heal my childlike yearning 

With your love-salve fingers

And your liquid eyes pushing

Into me beyond reach

I am aware of my desire like

The urgency of childbirth

There's servant power in your blood

That no one holds but you

I wrote that poem about 4 years ago after I had given up on the God I had grown up with in all its limited relational capacity. I know that it might make God-believers squirm, but maybe it's good to broaden our ideas of who God is to us, you know? Maybe it's time we stop making him smaller than he is.

He is in the locked gaze between my child and I while we lick our ice cream in the summer heat. He is in the rain dripping off the end of my nose, mixing with my tears, being rubbed on my shirt, clinging to my cold skin. He is in the smell of the familiar scent of a lover’s shirt, pressed against my face, breathed deeply in, spreading to my fingers and toes. He is because he is, and he just is. The more we try to define God, the harder it is for us pathetical mortals to reach him.

St. Augustine of Hippo says, “If you think you understand, it isn’t God.” It's like we keep tucking him back into the limits of our minds like a slip under a dress. If we hold him back then we will miss the ice cream, the sweat, the scent of the lover's shirt. Many people think that God-lovers shouldn't sit in pubs or have sex standing up but then we won't get to eat and drink and dance and laugh with him, and sex becomes one-dimensional. I want God inside of humanity, not just among us. I want him to pass between the locked gaze of me and my children while we lick our ice cream. I want him in the rain and in my tears. I want him stuck to my shirt, clinging to my cold skin. I want him to be in the scent of my lover's shirt, pressed against my face, breathed deeply in, spreading to my fingers and toes. 

I didn't grow up that way. I was scared of the intensity of the God I didn't intimately know. But later on I realized that if I was going to interact with him that I wanted to let go of my limited ideas of who he was and let him be who he is. I like it better this way. I don't want to know him out of fear, but out of desire, and that is what love is to me.